The present disclosure relates generally to a vehicle power door and more particularly to a power door safety locking system.
It is known to equip vehicles with one or more sliding doors on one or both sides to facilitate trouble-free loading and unloading of goods and/or passengers. Automated mechanisms can be employed to open and close the sliding doors. As these vehicles are sometimes used to transport children, safety locking mechanisms, known as child safety locks, have been devised to prevent unwanted door unlocking and/or opening. A known safety locking mechanism is shorted to ground when the safety locking mechanism is in the “ON” position and open circuited when the safety locking mechanism is in the “OFF” position. This approach, however, is not failsafe. In other words, if there is a ground fault or an open fault in the safety locking mechanism then undesirable operations with the sliding door can occur.
For example, in the event of an open fault the door functions as if the safety locking mechanism is disabled regardless if the safety locking mechanism is in an enabled or disabled position. As a result, the door can open or close via an inner handle or a rear switch. Conversely, in the event of a ground short, the door can be disabled even though the safety locking mechanism appears to be disabled. As a consequence, the user is not able to exit the vehicle using either the inner handle or the rear switch regardless of the position of the safety locking mechanism.